John Dewey
John Dewey, FAA (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, leading activist in the Georgist movement, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey is one of the primary figures associated with the philosophy of pragmatism and is considered one of the founders of functional psychology. A well-known public intellectual, he was also a major voice of progressive education and liberalism. Although Dewey is known best for his publications about education, he also wrote about many other topics, including epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, art, logic,social theory, and ethics. Tossup Questions # This thinker argued that an organism interacts with its environment through self-guided activity in an essay criticizing the then-dominant conception of the reflex arc. He rejected the term "epistemology" for his approach to the theory of knowledge, preferring to use terms like "theory of inquiry." A book by this thinker responded to Walter Lippmann's claim that the modern public could not successfully participate in democracy. He argued that schools should not be seen as a preparation for civic life but instead as continuous extensions of civil society. For 10 points, name this American pragmatist philosopher who wrote The Public and its Problems and Democracy and Education. # This president was depicted in a cartoon being told "It's better to be President than to be right!" by his mentor, and his first Secretary of State was the increasingly senile John Sherman. In one speech, he said that while walking through the White House after midnight, he became convinced the U.S. needed to "uplift and civilize and Christianize" a certain people. This man won the presidency thanks to a front- (*) porch campaign directed by Mark Hanna. During his term, he dispatched Commodore George Dewey to demolish an enemy navy. This man won his first term as president by defeating the Democrat who gave the "Cross of Gold" speech and also ran as a Populist. For 10 points, name this president during the Spanish-American War, who was assassinated by an anarchist in 1901. # This man refuted Walter Lippmann's view that journalists should transmit information from the elite to common people in a book that defines "the public" as a group of citizens indirectly bonded by the effects of events. This author of The Public and its Problems praised Keats' regard for imitation in a work that claims aesthetic creation and encounters are as important as works of (*) art themselves. In another book, this man argued that neither Plato's segmented system nor Rousseau's individualistic models of learning were sufficient since they did not promote cooperation or communication between citizens necessary for the free society of the title form of government. For 10 points, name this author of Art as Experience, an American pragmatist who wrote Democracy and Education. # Rorty's Achieving Our Country extols this philosopher as embodying the American spirit of Whitman's Democratic Vistas, identifying him as the "progressive Left" in contrast to the "critical Left" of Lyotard. This man argued that the first title entity is created only in response to "negative externalities" in a tract describing how corporate influence and vulgar pop culture had created an "eclipse," but not the "phantom" imagined by Walter Lippman. He described man as the "live creature" in his major text on aesthetics and challenged the stimulus-response model in an early Psychological Review article, but is best known for a work claiming that the formation of the mind resulted from an interplay between the individual and community. The author of "The Reflex-Arc Concept in Psychology" and Art as Experience, for 10 points, name this American pragmatist who wrote Democracy and Education. # This philosopher argued that problematic situations should be resolved through a process of inquiry that doesn't merely alter the opinions of the inquirers, but rather produces what he termed a "consummatory" state of affairs. This philosopher divided moral frameworks into deontological theories of right, teleological theories of good, and theories of virtue. In one work, he argued that the purpose of aesthetics is to reforge the connection between everyday life and (*) fine art. Another work by him argues that the title form of government is dependent on how the second title concept conditions people to be a part of the community. For 10 points, name this American pragmatist philosopher who wrote Art as Experience and Democracy and Education.